Debt

Time Is Running Out To Cancel Debt For Aging Borrowers

December 17, 2024 Lily Greenberg Call, In These Times. Resist! Debt, Debt Forgiveness, Education, Seniors

A group of student loan borrowers aged 50 and up traveled from around the country to Washington, D.C., on December 11, setting up rocking chairs outside the Department of Education. Dressed in ponchos and beanies to protect against the frigid rain, they passed out cross-stitch kits and signs reading “Knit-In for Debt Cancellation,” sharing their personal debt stories amidst chants of “Biden, don’t forget, cancel student debt.” These protesters are all members of the Debt Collective, the first union of debtors in the country, and they came to Washington with a message for President Joe Biden: Cancel student debt for borrowers over 50 years old before Donald Trump takes office in January.

How To Escape The Federal Debt Trap

December 9, 2024 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Create! Debt, Finance and the Economy, Inflation, Money

The U.S. national debt just passed $36 trillion, only four months after it passed $35 trillion and up $2 trillion for the year. Third quarter data is not yet available, but interest payments as a percent of tax receipts rose to 37.8% in the third quarter of 2024, the highest since 1996. That means interest is eating up over one-third of our tax revenues. Total interest for the fiscal year hit $1.16 trillion, topping one trillion for the first time ever. That breaks down to $3 billion per day. For comparative purposes, an estimated $11 billion, or less than four days’ federal interest, would pay the median rent for all the homeless people in America for a year.

It’s Up To Us To Demand A Jubilee To Wipe The Debts Of The Masses

October 28, 2024 Braxton Brewington, Truthout. Strategize! Debt, Finance and the Economy, Jubilee, Student Loans

Ahead of another fraught election cycle, 40 million Americans could see their “October surprise” approaching well in advance: a massive student loan bill. When the Biden-Harris administration resumed student debt payments in October 2023 after a nearly four-year pause, they implemented a one-year grace period. This “on ramp” would spare debtors of the harsh consequences of a missed or late payment — such as falling into default, hits to one’s credit, Social Security and wage garnishment or capitalized interest. A year later, those punitive measures have resumed, plunging debtors back into the throes of the student debt crisis.

An Abolitionist Approach To Debt

October 19, 2024 Chrystin Ondersma, Next City. Strategize! Basic Necessities, Debt, Human Rights, Legal System

When individuals cannot meet their basic needs without turning to debt, they face threats to their human dignity. Survival debt — debt that individuals incur to survive and live a life with dignity — is inherently intimidating and degrading. A person does not have the freedom to obtain a standard of living consistent with human dignity if the only means of acquiring housing, transportation, food, medical care or an education is to incur debt. Many indebted households can barely survive, much less vivir sabroso. Those who incur debt to meet basic needs must work, despite knowing that the fruits of their labor will be diverted to repay debt — while they still struggle just to meet basic needs, let alone accumulate the necessary resources to weather future emergencies or to build savings for retirement.

Debtor Organizing Can Transform Our Individual Financial Struggles

September 17, 2024 J. Patrick Patterson, In These Times. Strategize! Capitalism, Debt, Debtor's Unions, incarceration

Although debtors’ unions are a new, emerging front in the fight against racial capitalism, their potential holds across many types of debt. The millions of people being crushed by medical debt could organize locally to demand hospitals cancel their bills. Or they could start a national medical debt strike to advance the cause of universal healthcare. Credit card debtors could rally against usurious lending practices and advocate for a socially productive — as opposed to predatory — system of credit and debt. Student debtors could transform not only the predatory lending that has become synonymous with higher education, but also the landscape of who has access to that higher education in the first place.

How Liberal Elites Fail To Understand Economic Anxiety

September 13, 2024 Taki Manolakos, Portside. Educate! Class Struggle, Debt, Economic insecurity, Finance and the Economy, Liberal class, Worker Rights and Jobs

There is an ideological tendency among some liberal economists today that wants us to believe that Bidenomics has been the best thing since President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. A key advocate of this belief is economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. On September 7th, 2023, Krugman published an article titled “I’m OK, But Things Are Terrible” in which he claimed there is a disconnect between actual economic conditions and perceptions about the economy: “[t]he strange thing is that these bad ratings are persisting even as the economy, by any normal measure, has been doing extremely well.” Krugman and others who are fans of Bidenomics find it odd that when workers are asked about “the economy” their views are generally negative.

The Condition Of The American Working Class Today

September 2, 2024 Jack Rasmus, LA Progressive. Educate! Debt, Employment, Labor Day, Unions, United States, Wages, Worker Rights, Working Class

On Labor Day this writer has summed up the condition of the American working class over the past year. This national election year it is perhaps useful to review not only the past year but what has happened since the last election in 2020. How has the American worker fared the past four years—in terms of wages, benefits, inflation and jobs? How have their unions, now a mere 10% of the labor force, also fared during the period of recovery since the deep Covid era recession of 2020, the uneven recovery of 2020-21 that followed, and the past thirty months of what has been a modest economic growth.

Borders And The Exchange Of Humans For Debt

August 13, 2024 Heba Gowayed, In These Times. Educate! Debt, European Union (EU), Immigration, Racism, Systemic Racism

The jagged shoreline of the island of Lesbos, Greece, which runs into the Aegean Sea just miles from the Turkish coastline, is a site of the macabre and systemic practice of “border externalization,” where wealthy states enlist less wealthy states — often indebted ones — to intercept and brutalize human beings destined for their borders. It is here that 23-year-old Ahmed — who left Gaza in 2021 to find refuge from a life behind Israel’s Iron Wall and violence, which promised “no future, no work, no possibilities” — was beaten by Greek border patrol and left adrift on a dinghy with a broken engine. It would take five attempts, full of terror and humiliation, for Ahmed to reach Greece, which was just one stop on a longer journey to Germany to reunite with cousins.

Debt Is Political: Why Wealth Flows From Poor To Rich

August 5, 2024 Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Capitalism, Debt, Federal Reserve, wealth inequality

You may think that today, given the events of recent weeks, we might be talking about the wars that seem set to spiral out of control, particularly with Israel appearing so determined to escalate its hostilities with Hezbollah that it is willing to make accusations on entirely and visibly flimsy grounds. You might think that we will talk about how it’s not at all clear who’s in control, particularly in that country that so often fancies itself as the world’s policeman or woman, as the case may be. And indeed, we certainly intend to cover these topics in the future. However, today we will focus on a very closely related topic, and that is debt.

How Unelected Regulators Unleashed The Derivatives Monster

August 4, 2024 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Create! Banking, Debt, Finance and the Economy, Regulation

While the world is absorbed in the U.S. election drama, the derivatives time bomb continues to tick menacingly backstage. No one knows the actual size of the derivatives market, since a major portion of it is traded over-the-counter, hidden in off-balance-sheet special purpose vehicles. However, when Warren Buffet famously labeled derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction” in 2002, its “notional value” was estimated at $56 trillion. Twenty years later, the Bank for International Settlements estimated that value at $610 trillion. And financial commentators have put it as high as $2.3 quadrillion or even $3.7 quadrillion, far exceeding global GDP, which was about $100 trillion in 2022.

Debt Is Wage Theft, Debt Steals Leisure Time, Debt Can Suppress Strikes

August 2, 2024 Jason Wozniak, Sara Nelson, Brittany Alston, Olivia Schwob, Jackson Potter and Teresa Romero, In These Times. Strategize! Debt, Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Debt is fundamentally a labor issue. When labor is weak and unionization low, workers are forced to take on debt to offset costs for necessities like healthcare, housing and food. The more debt we have, the more we are compelled to work under the bosses’ conditions — rather than fighting for our own. Interest-heavy loans act as a regressive kind of pay cut, reaching deep into workers’ take-home earnings. Just to keep up with debt payments and interest, workers take on more hours and multiple low-paying jobs. And data shows debt can make workers more unlikely to strike.

Student Debt: It’s A System That’s Rigged

July 24, 2024 Maddy Clifford, In These Times. Educate! California, Class Struggle, Debt, Los Angeles, Student Loans

Leimert Park has long been one of the main hubs of Black life in Los Angeles and an innovative foil to the glitz, glam and paparazzi that many associate with the City of Angels. But anyone who knows better knows that LA’s working class, vibrant neighborhoods and excep-tionally creative locals actually make the city run. LA’s Juneteenth celebration emerged from Leimert Park in 1949; Tavis Smiley has production studios there; one of the city’s best haunts for book lovers, Eso Won Books, was there for more than 30 years; genius musicians like John Lee Hooker and Kamasi Washington could be found playing cheap shows at Babe’s and Ricky’s Inn or the World Stage; and Issa Rae used the television show Insecure to draw attention to how special the area is.

‘You Are Not A Loan!’ Introducing The Nation’s First Debtors’ Union

July 23, 2024 Hannah Appel and Astra Taylor, In These Times. Strategize! Capitalism, Debt, Debtor's Unions, Systemic Racism, Unions

A dozen members of Debt Collective were arrested at a Capitol Hill protest in May demanding that President Joe Biden “fund education, not genocide.” Before they were taken away by police, the protesters unfurled banners reading “You Are Not A Loan” and “$1,700,000,000,000” (the current amount of outstanding student debt). The connection was clear: Biden can and must use his executive powers to cancel all student debt and fund education, not to authorize and fund Israel’s destruction of Palestine. Organizers and activists came from all over the country to Washington, D.C., to tell him so. The “Fund Education, Not Genocide” action in May was just a sliver of what we’re about — and what we’re capable of.

St. Paul Is Erasing $100 Million In Medical Debt

July 3, 2024 Melvin Carter, Next City. Create! Debt, Healthcare, Medical Debt, Minnesota, St. Paul

We all deserve the right to access life-saving medical care without being trapped by staggering costs that leave us unable to pay for our housing, food and other basic needs. Over the next year, 43,000 residents of Saint Paul, Minnesota will receive a letter in the mail telling them that their medical debt – the crippling hospital bills that have been hanging over their head for years – have been paid off. Using federal pandemic relief funds, left over from the city’s response to COVID-19, to erase medical debt for our low-income neighbors is not a move without controversy: Critics, including some residents and elected officials, have argued that dealing with residents’ medical debt isn’t the role of government.

IMF-Driven Policies Spark Deadly Protests In Kenya

June 27, 2024 Robert Inlakesh, MintPress News. Resist! Debt, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kenya, Mass Action, State Violence, Taxes

At least 23 Kenyan protesters were killed on Tuesday after hundreds stormed the nation’s parliament in response to a proposed tax-hike bill, which threatens to deepen the country’s cost of living crisis. The IMF’s pressure on Nairobi to balance its budget is central to the issue. Videos of bodies strewn across the concrete and protesters storming the parliament went viral on social media. This follows protests the previous week that brought the nation to a standstill. President William Ruto, elected to address the cost of living crisis, is now seen attempting to combat dissent with force, having failed to improve conditions.

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